youlikewelike.com:

Gucci, Volvo, American Express, IKEA, Motorola, Hyundai, Versace,

Toyota; the list continues to grow of companies incorporating
lesbian and gay imagery in its corporate advertising. Increasingly
lesbians, in particular, are being used as a marketing tool. But
look closer and it becomes clear that it is far from a case of
'sisters are doing it for themselves' and more a case of the
corporates getting what they always want: New markets and increased
growth. Yum, yum.

Once upon a time lesbian activists decried the absence of Sapphic imagery in the media. Whilst crude stereotypes of gay men, peppered the media landscape by the 1970s, gay women were invisible. 'Lesbians are everywhere' was a popular radical lesbian slogan of the 1970s, a defiant condemnation of the fact that they quite plainly were not - or certainly not in a visible way. By the 1980s a more popular slogan was embraced by gay women: 'Nobody knows I'm a lesbian', another wry comment on lesbian invisibility.

Only now, in the oh-so-ironic Noughties, 'Nobody knows I'm a lesbian' T-shirts are on sale in souvenir shops on Oxford Street. No self-respecting gay woman would wear one these days but you will see them sported by male rock stars and stag party revellers, taking the rise out of 'the lesbian,' a concept that they seem to find both intriguing and repellent. In little more than a decade, the lesbian and her T-shirt have moved from the undercover, from being the defiant sexual outlaw, to public property appropriated by heterosexual men for their own sport and amusement. A parallel development has taken place in the world of advertising.

With the success of the gay liberation and feminist movements, lesbians can no longer be ignored. Queen Victoria may have lived in an era that permitted her to express disbelief at the existence of such creatures but, since the 1970s, female homosexuals have been creating an ever more public presence in our society. This, along with the visible growth of gay male communities, has presented a challenge to heterosexuals, one felt most keenly by heterosexual men, whose dominance of the world is under attack from both sides, in the form of gay men and lesbian women. Much has been written about the modern-day 'crisis in masculinity' and (straight) men's anxiety about their changing role, and nothing could embody this threat more than the
Lesbian.

Faced with what, in theory, should be their worst nightmare, the heterosexual
male has cleverly subverted the notion of the Lesbian, re-imagining her as his best dream come true. After failing to suppress and keep hidden female homosexuality, heterosexual men have co-opted lesbian women into their own heterosexuality. So much so that female homosexuality has become a marker, a highly charged signifier of laddish, male heterosexual libido.To neutralise the threat posed by lesbianism, men have learned to ridicule it (in the bogeyman figure of the unwomanly feminist militant peace campaign masculinised man-hater) or eroticise it. Both strategies are an attempt to remove the power and challenge that lesbianism would otherwise present. By creating the concept of the 'fake' lesbian, the fear of the real thing is further minimised. It is no coincidence that the growth of 'lesbian' imagery in heterosexual pornography has mirrored the societal advances of women in general and of lesbian women in particular.

Advertising, like all industries, is a man's world. Ad agencies are invariably lead by men and the vast majority of the industry's 'creatives' are men (usually young men). Advertising is also the world seen through a male lens and lesbianism has become potent shorthand in ad land for heterosexual men's anxieties and aspirations. More and more, a set of 'scripts' or cultural texts are acted out on screen and in print, scripts written by men to reflect their reality or, more often, their fantasy.

Lesbianism offers a difficult brief; how to market to male consumers something that by definition excludes them or is even hostile towards them? Well, accentuate the positive! Lesbians are, after all, still women, and men are conditioned to believe they are attractive to and have a right to all women.Two girls together offer the tantalising prospect of double the fun; female beauty times two, twice as many sexual possibilities, double the pleasure. All that is needed is to believe that the Lesbian isn't serious about the awkward same-sex attraction part of the sexual equation, that really she wants a man (and that her girlfriend wants to join in too). A persistent fantasy of many males is the belief that their libido can crack even the toughest of nuts and that they can 'convert' a lesbian - any lesbian.

The aesthetics of femininity, as perceived by heterosexuals, demands that the fantasy lesbian looks indistinguishable from the fantasy straight female sex object - otherwise what would be the point? Men demand that their gay women are 'babes', not, heaven forbid, 'dykes'. While heterosexual males are mostly profoundly disturbed at the notion of gay men, be they effeminate or masculine, their unease is only directed at lesbians who represent looks and behaviour that encroach on their own territory and power, on the masculine. In contrast, girly lesbians are more than welcome in their world...more 

words: Richard Scholey

download PDF/print

commercialcloset.org

Robert Reich + Shack + Twisted Charm + Matix + Jose Gonzales + Canon Blue + Remi Nicole + Biker Gangs + X Factor Jungle + Kyte + Four Tet + American Apparel + Fair Trials Abroad + Kissaway Trail + Asghar Bukhari + London Gangs + Ava Leigh +
Fareshare + Emmy The Great + Honour Killings + Sideshow + Private Armies +
Kate, Leonardo & Sam + Gloria Cycles

Robyn Hitchcock interview...

Singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock (previously of The Soft Boys...more

South Coast interviews...

Packed full of great tunes, stories, graff', eccentric characters and dazzling live performances...more